The present invention relates to a novel receptor in the TNF family. A novel receptor has been identified as the BAFF receptor (“BAFF-R”).
The TNF family consists of pairs of ligands and their specific receptors referred to as TNF family ligands and TNF family receptors (Bazzoni and Beutler (1996) N. Engl. J. Med. 334(26):1717–1725. The family is involved in the regulation of the immune system and possibly other non-immunological systems. The regulation is often at a “master switch” level such that TNF family signaling can result in a large number of subsequent events best typified by TNF. TNF can initiate the general protective inflammatory response of an organism to foreign invasion that involves the altered display of adhesion molecules involved in cell trafficking, chemokine production to drive specific cells into specific compartments, and the priming of various effector cells. As such, the regulation of these pathways has clinical potential.
Induction of various cellular responses mediated by such TNF family cytokines is believed to be initiated by their binding to specific cell receptors. At least two distinct TNF receptors of approximately 55 kDa (TNFR1) and 75 kDa (TNFR2) have been identified (Hohman et al. (1989) J. Biol. Chem. 264:14927–14934; and Brockhaus et al. (1990) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 87:3127–3131). Extensive polymorphisms have been associated with both TNF receptor genes. Both TNFRs share the typical structure of cell surface receptors including extracellular, transmembrane and intracellular domains. The extracellular portion of type 1 and type 2 TNFRs contains a repetitive amino acid sequence pattern of four cysteine rich domains (CDRs). A similar repetitive pattern of CDRs exist in several other cell surface proteins, including p75 nerve growth factor receptor, the B-cell antigen CD40 amongst others.
The receptors are powerful tools to elucidate biological pathways because of their easy conversion to immunoglobulin fusion proteins. These dimeric soluble receptor forms are good inhibitors of events mediated by either secreted or surface bound ligands. By binding to these ligands they prevent the ligand from interacting with cell associated receptors that can signal. Not only are these receptor-Fc fusion proteins useful in an experimental sense, but they have been successfully used clinically in the case of TNF-R-Fc to treat inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis and the acute clinical syndrome accompanying OKT3 administration (Eason et al. (1996) Transplantation 61(2):224–228; Feldmann et al. (1996) Int. Arch. Allergy Immunol. 111(4):362–365; and van Dullemen et al. (1995) Gastroenterol. 109(1):129–135) One can envision that manipulation of the many events mediated by signaling through the TNF family of receptors will have wide application in the treatment of immune based diseases and also the wide range of human diseases that have pathological sequelae due to immune system involvement. A soluble form of a recently described receptor, osteoprotegerin, can block the loss of bone mass and, therefore, the events controlled by TNF family receptor signaling are not necessarily limited to immune system regulation (Simonet et al. (1997) Cell 89(2):309–319). Antibodies to the receptor can block ligand binding and hence can also have clinical application. Such antibodies are often very long-lived and may have advantages over soluble receptor-Fc fusion proteins which have shorter blood half-lives.
While inhibition of the receptor mediated pathway represents the most exploited therapeutic application of these receptors, originally it was the activation of the TNF receptors that showed clinical promise (Aggarwal and Natarajan (1996) Eur Cytokine Netw. 7(2):93–124). Activation of the TNF receptors can imitate cell death in the target cell and hence the application to tumors was and still is attractive (Eggermont et al. (1996) Ann. Surg. 224(6):756–765). The receptor can be activated either by administration of the ligand, i.e. the natural pathway or some antibodies that can crosslink the receptor are also potent agonists. Antibodies would have an advantage in oncology since they can persist in the blood for long periods whereas the ligands generally have short lifespans in the blood. As many of these receptors may be expressed more selectively in tumors or they may only signal cell death or differentiation in tumors, agonist antibodies could be good weapons in the treatment of cancer. Likewise, many positive immunological events are mediated via the TNF family receptors, e.g. host inflammatory reactions, antibody production etc. and therefore agonistic antibodies could have beneficial effects in other, non-oncological applications.
Paradoxically, the inhibition of a pathway may have clinical benefit in the treatment of tumors. For example the Fas ligand is expressed by some tumors and this expression can lead to the death of Fas positive lymphocytes thus facilitating the ability of the tumor to evade the immune system. In this case, inhibition of the Fas system could then allow the immune system to react to the tumor in other ways now that access is possible (Green and Ware (1997) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94(12):5986–90).
The TNF family ligand BAFF, also known as TALL-1, THANK, BLyS and zTNF4 (Schneider et al. (1999) J. Exp. Med. 189(11):1747–1756; Shu et al. (1999) J. Leukoc. Biol. 65(5):680–683; Mukhopadhyay et al. (1999) J. Biol. Chem. 274(23):15978–15981; Moore et al. (1999) Science 285(5425):260–263; Gross et al. (2000) Nature 404(6781):995–999) enhances B cell survival in vitro (Batten et al. (2000) J. Exp. Med. 192(10):1453–1466) and has emerged as a key regulator of peripheral B cell populations in vivo. Mice over-expressing BAFF display mature B cell hyperplasia and symptoms of systemic lupus erythaematosus (SLE) (Mackay et al. (1999) J. Exp. Med. 190(11):1697–1710). As well, some SLE patients have significantly increased levels of BAFF in their serum (Zhang et al. (2001) J. Immunol. 166(1):6–10). It has therefore been proposed that abnormally high levels of this ligand may contribute to the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases by enhancing the survival of autoreactive B cells (Batten et al. (2000) J. Exp. Med. 192(10):1453–1466).
BAFF, a type II membrane protein, is produced by cells of myeloid origin (Schneider et al. (1999) J. Exp. Med. 189(11):1747–1756; Moore et al. (1999) Science 285(5425):260–263) and is expressed either on the cell surface or in a soluble form (Schneider et al. (1999) J. Exp. Med. 189(11):1747–1756). Two TNF receptor family members, BCMA and TACI have previously been shown to interact with BAFF (Gross et al. (2000) Nature 404:995–999; Thompson et al. (2000) J. Exp. Med. 192(1):129–135; Xia et al. (2000) J. Exp. Med. 192:137–143; Masters et al. (2000) Curr. Biol. 10(13):785–788; Shu et al. (2000) J. Leukoc Biol. 65(5):680–683; Wu et al. (2000) J. Biol. Chem. 275:35478–35485).